Prenatal Vitamins

You may slack off when it comes to getting proper diet and exercise for yourself, but suddenly when you are solely responsible for the health of a growing fetus, your mindset changes, or at least it should change. It is your duty to ensure you provide an optimal environment for your baby to flourish. This is where prenatal vitamins can help you ensure just that. When a woman is pregnant, her dietary needs change drastically, obviously you eat more but it’s what you are eating that is much more important than how much you are eating. As odd as a pregnant womans cravings can get, I rarely see them craving extra vitamins and folic acid!

Best Prenatal Vitamins

Not all supplements and vitamins are created equal, and when pregnant you want to fully ensure that you are giving yourself and your baby everything that you need, so don’t skimp when it comes to getting yourself the best prenatal vitamins. In order to determine what prenatal vitamins to buy, you need to consider two things. The quality of the ingredients and the amount of the ingredients.

A pregnant woman needs a much higher daily percentage of vitamins than normally and since most humans don’t get enough vitamins from their diet alone when their not pregnant, I can ensure you that unless you have the most disciplined and regimented diet plan known to woman, you probably won’t get enough vitamins from your diet alone.

So let’s look at the first issue of importance when selecting a prenatal vitamin, the quality of the supplement. This is where you don’t want to skimp when selecting your supplement, for you don’t want to be cheating yourself and your baby, or worse cause more harm than good. The first thing you need to check is that the supplement is a food based prenatal vitamin.

There are a plethora of prenatal vitamin supplements to choose from and many of those are of synthetic quality. Synthetic vitamins are not natural, they are chemically produced and not completely recognized by the human body so instead of being absorbed and beneficial, your body eliminates them through urine, perspiration and feces. If an adult human body cannot recognize synthetic vitamins as important, how is a developing fetus supposed to?

Whole food vitamins are derived from food sources, so the body sees them as food, digests them like food and absorbs them like food, because they are food. There’s no better vitamin source that is both organic and whole food based. Experts agree that one of the best prenatal vitamins is made by New Chapter, which is both organic and whole food based. See below for live pricing comparisons on New Chapter’s Perfect Prenatal multivitamin supplement.

The second issue of importance when selecting a prenatal vitamin is the amount of each ingredient, meaning how much of each vitamin is in the supplement. The amount of each essential vitamin that a woman needs greatly increases during pregnancy. Pregnancy puts stress on the body and you need to ensure you are properly nourished so your body can maintain the health of you and your developing fetus. The amount of each vitamin is pretty standard across the top brands of prenatal vitamins but there are two ingredients you need to be especially aware of, iron and folic acid.

The importance of iron during pregnancy:

Iron plays an essential role in the body and is especially important during pregnancy. Iron helps blood carry oxygen to various organs and parts of the body, including the fetus. I don’t think i need to elaborate on the importance of your baby having enough oxygen during pregnancy. The reason for the elevated requirement of iron in the body during pregnancy is because the total volume of blood increases in a pregnant woman by almost 50%.

With all this extra blood, iron is required to make enough hemoglobin as well as get the body up to an optimal level of iron, especially since a lot of women begin pregnancy with low levels of iron to begin with, from an inadequate diet. Iron deficiency during pregnancy is associated with premature deliveries, low birth weights and infant mortality.

The importance of folic acid during pregnancy:

Folic acid is of great importance during pregnancy and many doctors recommend getting your folic acid levels optimized while trying to conceive and then maintaining them with a prenatal vitamin once pregnant. Folic acid works in conjunction with iron to make normal red blood cells and prevent anemia. It also helps greatly in the production, repair and functionality of DNA, making it a crucial vitamin for a developing fetus to have access to.

Most importantly folic acid is greatly effective in preventing NTD’s (neural tube defects) which are serious birth defects of the brain and spinal cord. According to the CDC this type of birth defect occurs in about 3,000 pregnancies per year, often very early in the development process, before most women even know they are pregnant. Taking the recommended dose of 400 micrograms daily while trying to conceive can reduce the chances of NTD’s by up to 70 percent.

Follow these guidelines when choosing your prenatal vitamins and know that you’re doing yourself and your healthy baby a good thing by providing a healthy environment for you both to thrive. Best of health.

Good post, can’t really go wrong with New Chapter’s line of products, not many brands compare in quality of ingredients. I took these during my pregnancy and felt great, helped prevent constipation too, always a plus.